Date Night
by HoshisamaValmor
Summary: Shorter asks Ash for help to win a girl's heart. He really shouldn't have. Just two dumb teenagers being dumb buddies and forgetting all the gang shit of their lives.


Shorter had now spent ten full minutes staring at the mirror, moving a particularly troublesome lock of hair from one side to the other until it'd fall into perfect place. That perfect place seemed non-existent, however, and Shorter sighed in utter defeat.

"I really should've figured out the hair first before the clothes," he whined, looking down at the fancy 'casual chic' outfit he'd picked - in a hurry, though, and everything was a bit oversized in his haste. After all, he appreciated stylin' comfort, but 'casual chic' didn't seem to actually work as well as he thought it would when you add a slighty oversized version.

"Maybe you shouldn't have picked something that makes you look so dumb," Ash complained, sticking his index on a side of the braces and snapping it against Shorter's chest like a whip, making Shorter yelp and lose the lock of hair. "Suspenders, Shorter? Seriously?"

"As if I'd just go there looking like I do normally? I want to impress her!"

"Uh-uh," Ash hummed. "How'd you get her into going out with you to begin with, then?"

"Nadia." It had been a rethorical question (and first thing Shorter yelled when he crashed over Ash's and dragged him all the way to Chinatown to help him with the quest to get ready for a date) but Shorter was too busy working against neatly combing every single strand of purple into a bun, so his brain had no time for multitasking between thinking and moving. "Just another minute..."

"It's been an hour," Ash corrected and Shorter scoffed. Surely he was exaggerating, and Shorter pushed him gently with his shoulder to the side and out of the way of the mirror. It was a hard-enough task without the blond-model-perfect-ray-of-sunshine blocking his view.

"Almost..."

"Why not just shave your head again?" Ash dared, but Shorter dismissed him with a wave and pulled one last lock of hair into the bun, tucking it firmly in place and opening his arms in victory.

"There! Done!"

Ash glared at the reflection of the hair. Shorter did see how those green-ass eyes locked the sight in the mirror, then on the top of his head, but Shorter was no lynx or anything close to a predator like that. So of course he was a defenceless little damn prey against the ruthless and merciless strike Ash threw at him, pulling off the rubber band and freeing the purple mop.

"Ash! God fucking dammit! You're supposed to help me out here!"

"You're being stupid," Ash said with a look of utter unimpressiveness (was that a word? 'Cause it certainly was the word that Shorter felt would really get the feeling splattered on the boy's face) and Shorter's moaned louder as he pushed him away.

"Why are you like that?" he said, finding a hair out of place in his piercing-less eyebrow before quickly caging all the hair against his palms again. "You're the worst, man. I wanted you to help me out!"

"I _am._ You're trying too hard. You shouldn't worry about how you look. If she likes you, she likes you for what and how you are, not for pretending to be something else. If she focus on that alone, then she's not worth your time."

"Easy for you to say," Shorter pouted, frowning as he successfully managed to hold a grip of the hair and began bunning it again. He threw a warning glare at Ash. "You can show up with bed-hair and a sack of potatoes and girls'd still fall like a mat in front of you."

Ash shrugged.

"I don't like looking this way. Only catches the wrong type of attention."

"It was what caught _my_ attention to begin with," he recalled, a flash of those first days in juvie crossing his mind.

"Did I fucking stutter?" Ash mocked, grinning widely when Shorter barked an ironic laugh and punched him in the arm. Thankfully, the bun was already secure and he immediately stepped back to avoid retaliation.

"Well fuck you very much." Shorter replied, taking one more glance at the mirror and his fully accomplished shape. He grinned and looked dumb, so he toned it down to a kinda smirk and looked a bit better. "Yeah. This is gonna be great!"

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Yeah. It was a disaster.

He might not be the most sex-appealing guy in the world, but Shorter had his healthy dose of self-esteem and his very unhealthy dose of teenager bouncy hormones, a mix of which didn't seem to work its magic with the girl. Her boredom gathered up in shovelfuls and soon she ditched him for someone more appealing and less weird, so Shorter swallowed down his dumped-shame with a few buckets of beer and soon after he was happily dumped and happily drunk.

"I see the date went well."

Shorter rolled over the counter and his head fell over to the bartender's side, but seeing as she hadn't been the one talking and surely the upside-down bottles hadn't either, he rolled some more until he was staring at Ash, a hilariously sly grin on his face as Shorter's mouth gaped.

"Heyyyy, Ash. Whatcha doin' here?"

He shrugged. "I had the night out. Got bored and decided to come out for a drink. Good thing I saw you." He sat down on the stool next to the one Shorter had managed to not fall from yet and ordered himself a drink. "Didn't go too well, I see."

Shorter hummed sillily. He was not exactly a happy type drunk, though, and on the level of intoxication he had, it showed. Which means he was a all-everything type of drunk.

He tackled Ash in his arms and squeezed him and started wailing.

"I'll never marry! ! Nadia will kill me! ! Ash! ! What should I do? ? I'll be single forever! ! ! Why is the world so unfair?!"

Ash sighed and patted him on the shoulder.

"Yeah, Shorter, I'm sure Nadia's heartbroken that you didn't marry the first girl you dated."

Shorter's drunk tantrum lasted a handful more seconds before he was drooling over Ash in a semi-sleep from which Ash woke him up with a grimace and a shove that instead made him land with his arms over the counter and his head tucked against them.

"Well, being too much 'you' wouldn't have cut it either," Ash admitted as Shorter hiccuped. "We'll need to find some balance there."

"Uh-uuuh."

The beer placed in front of Ash was swipped away by Shorter the next second (he did have predatory reflexes after all!) and half of it had been poured down before Ash managed to salvage the remaining.

"No wonder the girl dumped you. This's my drink, you dumbass."

"As if, man... you're not my date, you're my bro... I can steal all the drinks away!"

"That doesn't mean I won't punch you in the face."

"At least she didn't slap me..." Shorter realized slowly, smiling for that consolation prize. "Means I did something well at least, huh?"

"Yeah, we really need to work on how much 'you' you put into this. We're gonna need to pratice."

"Can we do it now~? Well, you're a lot hotter than she was, that's for sure."

Ash grinned.

"Come now, don't let people start thinking you're gay."

"Ah, my life could probably be so much simpler. I'd just ask you out and be done with it. A hot-ass guy like you, girls would start falling over my feet then and none of them would be hotter than you."

"Yeah, a floor mat of girls, sure," Ash dragged ironically.

"Seriously man," Shorter ignored him. "You're too fucking pretty. And I can steal beers from you! That'd be a match made in heaven."

"And I can punch you." Shorter laughed in hiccups and Ash ended up joining him before saying: "I'd still take you out for a date though."

"You would?" Shorter asked, rolling his head on his arms to look at Ash with a smile that Ash returned as a scoff.

"Yeah, but put on some sunglasses or something. You look too weird with them."

Shorter ended up jumping from his seat and grabbing at someone's sunglasses and shoving them in his face with a grin, which then proceded into a fist fight that added Ash into the mix and ended up with Shorter happily dumped, drunk and bruised and being carried singing on Ash's back until Nadia welcomed them with a look of utter unimpressiveness (Yes. That is a word), so... yeah, maybe date night was not the best idea in general.

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the end

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Author's Note: Thanks for reading, feedback is appreciated.


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